Clinton Blasts Uzi Owners

WASHINGTON: Apologies may be in vogue at the White House right now. But President Clinton offered no regrets Monday to some 20,000 would-be assault weapon owners -- whose imported guns will remain tantalizingly out of reach as a result of today's executive order. And that, says the President, is just as it should be. "You don't need an Uzi to go deer hunting," he told a Rose Garden audience of crime-fighting officials. "You don't need an AK-47 to shoot skeet."

Naturally, the NRA interprets this ban on such sports-utility Uzis as a "war on America's law-abiding gun owners." Not that Clinton's order came as much of a surprise: A temporary ban on "cosmetically modified" assault weapons was first instigated last November, pending Treasury Department review. And that in itself was little more than an extension of the 1994 Crime Bill ban, from which Clinton and Gore have gotten a lot of mileage. But it's not all bad news for semiautomatic addicts -- the .308-caliber Vepr, a modified AK-47, made it through review to remain perfectly legal.